Thank you for this. I mean the following in the best possible way: Unable to sleep at 2:00 this morning, I turned on this video, which I'd begun earlier. Your calm, factual presentation style was the perfect tonic for insomnia and I am truly grateful. Having gone back and listened to the video when I am more alert, I found it as informative and fascinating as ever. It is the perfect antidote to over-the-top graphics-heavy, content-light SpaceX fanboys. I never miss a chance to recommend your work.
A moonlit clearing in a dense forest. A campfire flickers in the center. (Scene opens on Orion, a muscular figure draped in furs, roasting a boar over the fire. He sings a boisterous song about his conquests.) Orion: (Singing) Orion the mighty, with spear so bright, No beast escapes me, by day or by night. Lions and bears, I bring them all low, My name whispered on the wind, as legends grow! (Artemis enters, a serene figure clad in silver, with a bow in her hand.) Artemis: Orion. Orion: (Startled) Goddess Artemis! What brings you to this humble fire? Artemis: Your arrogance, hunter, echoes through the woods. You boast of victories, but forget the true purpose of the hunt. Orion: (Scoffs) Purpose? There's only one purpose: the thrill of the chase, the sweet taste of victory. Artemis: The hunt is about respect for the wild, about feeding the land and keeping balance. Your careless slaughter disrupts the natural order. Orion: (Defensively) My skills are unmatched! I bring prosperity to these lands with every beast I bring down. Artemis: You bring fear. Fear drives out balance. (Merope, a young woman with shimmering hair, enters timidly.) Merope: Orion... Orion: Merope, my dear. Have you brought more wine? Merope: (Hesitantly) No, Orion. The Pleiades are worried. Your hunts have driven away the game, leaving them hungry. Orion: Nonsense! There's enough for all. Artemis: Pride blinds you, Orion. Look at what your boasting has caused. (Orion looks at Merope, her face pale. Shame creeps across his face.) Orion: Merope... I... Merope: (Eyes welling up) My sisters... they are starving. Orion: (Kneeling before her) Forgive me. I was blinded by my own ego. What can I do to make amends? Artemis: You can learn humility. You can use your skills to protect the land, not just conquer its creatures. Orion: I will. I will hunt only what is needed, nurture the land, and respect the balance of nature. Merope: (A small smile) Thank you, Orion. Perhaps with your help, the Pleiades can rebuild. Orion: (Stands, a newfound determination in his eyes) Then let us begin. Guide me, Artemis, teach me the true path of the hunt. Artemis: (Nods) There is much to learn. But with humility, you can become a protector, not a destroyer. (Orion looks up at the night sky, where the Pleiades constellation shimmers.) Orion: To the hunt, with respect. (Artemis and Orion head off into the forest, while Merope watches them go, a flicker of hope in her eyes.) (Lights fade.)
As I understand it, NRHO is also useful for the long term plans for gateway. It is right on the edge of the moons gravity well, so it is easier to use as a jumping off point for the deep space transport program. It could also be used as a fuel depot if isru ends up working out.
If you have ISRU I can perhaps see some benefit, but otherwise you're just spending propellant to get someplace and then more propellant to get away from it. It's also a very inconvenient orbit in that it's so elliptical. You get a chance to go to/come from the moon only once a week or so, which means transfers from the surface are rare.
@@EagerSpace I personally think ISRU is unlikely to be practical, especially within the timeline of a mars mission. Currently though, all the MTV plans use gateway as a jumping off point, so there must be some benefit. I lack the research skills to make a better point here lol.
The idea is that somebody is trying to trade on Tsiolkovsky's legacy and they asked somebody for something in Russian to go on the label and that's what the person gave them.
@@EagerSpace I thought it's a joke about "god power elixirs", that promise to make you able to defy laws of nature. To defy Tsiolkovsky's equation in this case
perihelion and apohelion are when you're talking about an orbit in two dimensions. Periapsis and apoapsis are used when dealing in the third dimension.
Almost. If starship was fully functional, there's *probably* an approach where you go from LEO to the lunar surface and back into some lunar orbit, where you meet up with a tanker that refuels you and then starship + tanker land on earth. We're a long way from that point, however.
3050m/s deltaV for starship from LEO to translunar injection isn't a realistic estimation, more reasonable will be 3450m/s like Apollo did, this is much better than Artemis need to do 4100m/s, but this is the price you need to pay for a low thrust to weigh ratio, because even if you are in orbit you need to count for some gravity losses if you cannot make orbit changes in very short time frame. Well are some solutions to this problem, like how Israeli Beresheet made many short burns but they come with some additional problems.
@@OlCrunch I’m not sure this is the real reason. My understanding is that Gateway was supposed to serve as a test bed for conditions you would have aboard the MVT, namely with regards to radiation and crew ferrying. NASA REALLY wants to emphasize that because Mars will require some kind of months-long journey, they want somewhere to simulate that environment. They also want somewhere to quickly ferry you up and down from more quickly (1 week or less) presumably for emergencies. Edit: NASA also hopes to build the MTV off from Gateway, as an alternative to Starship.
@@dylangtech What NASA wants is irrelevant since they are clearly not going to be going anywhere with any of their ancient billion dollar expendable hardware, they will just end up paying for seats on starship just as we see is already happening with Artemis.
*Generally speaking*, going from LEO to the lunar surface costs about the same regardless of what path you take, at least for paths that you would want to use with humans.
Actually using starship as space tug is a great idea, if you assume that is used for translunar injection and lunar orbit retro burn, you don't need SLS and lunar gateway too, and payload delivered to the moon surface is only 10 tons less than in the case of SLS +starship case.
It's possible. NASA would need a resupply spacecraft, like Dragon or Cygnus to put on top of Ares I. NASA would need to develop that vehicle. Ares I would likely be a very pricey way to do resupply.
@@EagerSpace Wow I didn't expect you to answer! Thanks! I now appriciate you and your channel even more haha. But yeah, can't they just use a expendable orion service module?
@@tzmif6876 Service modules typically just handle propulsion and power - they don't have the smarts that are required to do navigation, so that capability would need to be added for resupply, but it would certainly be feasible to do that.
2:04 "Only 43 tons to the Moon" - To use the word "only" ignores a major fact. In 2022 operational heavy lift LEO, includes only one vehicle that can orbit more than Saturn sent toward the Moon. Granted, by the end of 2022 there may be one or two more, and a very capable pair they will be!
You make great content and I'm sure you're an industry professional, but you've always been, optimistic about the Starship, which I think deserves some critical examination. While there's nothing obviously wrong with the idea of a big two stage rocket, or the Raptor engine, Given Musk's record I don't think we can simply take their word for just how close is the Starship to actual orbital flight, or if SpaceX will ever have the resources to finish it. I mean just for example, are we seriously going to land a Starship on the moon? Is there no concern of it tipping over? How will astronauts and equipment get down from over the 50m tall propulsion sections of the vehicle? What about the fact that a Starship second stage will take 6 other Starship launches to fully refuel? Does it even make sense to go from LEO to the moon and back all in one stage? Is that a sensible mission architecture? Remember, that president of SpaceX openly promised that they'll "definitely" fly people point to point on Earth, with Starship, surely any industry professional know that to be hogwash? So why the lack of critical examination of their claims?
@interests I wonder, it reads like it was written by somebody that mostly reads pop science and got a bone to pick with Musk, while asking questions there answers are either readily available already or questions that are just outright stupid.
Given Musks record, you mean 152 booster landings and counting, or do you mean Crew 6 in February, or launching more upmass to orbit in 2022 than the rest of the world combined? Falcon 9 surpassing Shuttle total flight rate and hot on the heels of Soyuz's? You're gonna have to be a little clearer here lol
I'm not an industry professional, just a committed amateur. I generally base my estimations on what I know about the history of rocketry, what is technically possible, and what is likely to be practical. I don't talk about Starship here because it's not really the point of the video. NASA has chosen starship as their lunar lander and recently released some data that they expect it to make its first flight in December. I don't see any real reason to doubt that; clearly NASA has insider information on the status of starship and it making an orbital flight would really be unsurprising at this point. SpaceX has launched hundreds of medium rockets and 4 heavy rockets, so a super heavy rocket is pretty clearly within their capabilities... WRT the other possible lunar issues, NASA went through a very thorough review of the SpaceX proposal and gave it high marks in the technical evaluation, so it's pretty clear they believe all of these things can be done. WRT point-to-point, assuming Starship is as reusable and safe as SpaceX asserts it will be - something that obviously remains to be demonstrated - then point to point is likely practical from a technical standpoint. From a regulatory perspective, however, it will be a *huge* undertaking - taking all the current regulations around passenger air travel in the US and applying them to sub-orbital rockets will take years.
@@planetsec9 those are all F9. I'll just say this, NASA didn't want them to propulsively land the Dragon for crew safety, Starship can ONLY land by propulsion, if there's an engine failure, if there's problem with the fuel system, if engines can't ignite, it's 100% mission fail. That's a whole lot to be betting on after spending a week in deep space and landing on the moon.
